‘GMO Labeling Armageddon’

On November 6th, California will be the American bellwether battleground between consumers’ right1to know which foods on store shelves contain GMO-ingredients, versus the self-anointed ‘right’8 of the GMO Industry to continue withholding such information from consumers (i.e.: mothers who wish to make their own healthiest-possible informed food choices for their children).

In nominally the most open and free country in the world, why is it that US citizens even have to struggle to defend such rights when more than fifty other countries have already lead the way in GMO labelling?

Many questions not answered

Why all the secrecy? 8

If your company’s GMOs were all that great, wouldn’t you want to brag about them on the product label?

Why rush to market with so many health and safety questions unanswered? 2, 3

Are there correlations in the rapid deployment of GMO-foods and the near-epidemic increases in food allergies (I,e,: gluten), autism, inflammatory bowel diseases and other digestive and metabolic problems, cancers, infertility, obesity, Alzheimer’s, and many other disease conditions?4

Why have the GMO-proponents not done any long-term animal studies to simulate human lifetime exposures, as done by French research team? 5

Why have GMOs not been pulled from the market pending further long-term studies by independent researchers to confirm findings of the Italian study (Showing massive tumour growth in 2-year rat study)? 5, 6, 7

Why hasn’t the FDA taken the lead in protecting our food safety, as they are mandated to do?

Follow the money

The American Agra-Food Industry is both huge and powerful. It seems that those who have most of the business now, want all of it, both domestically and globally. The Food industry giants seem to be trying to emulate the success of Big Pharma which has made untold $Billions by producing and patenting synthetic versions of natural functional remedies that they could then sell to their captive Medical Health Care Industry. The Mega Food Industry believes that if it can proprietorially change a bit of genetic code on ultimately ALL of our food, ultimately it will be able to hold everyone on the planet hostage.

Sound Orwellian? Just look at how far the industry has encroached so far. Due to the far too compliant (or complicit?) regulatory bodies, the GMO proponents have been given a blank cheque to conduct their own version of fast-track research, award themselves their own safety approvals, and rapidly deploy their products throughout the marketplace, without having to disclose anything to the end consumers.

Nearly 80% of the foods we now eat have a GMO component to it; and we weren’t even asked!

To deliberately deprive consumers the option of making their own informed decisions regarding their food components is alarming enough. But to infiltrate and manipulate the governmental regulatory bodies whose mandate is to ensure our food safety, such that the public at large unwittingly becomes the test laboratory for unproven GMO products is unconscionable. It appears almost unconstitutional, if not outright corrupt. The appointment of a Monsanto Vice President to the position of Food Safety guru at the FDA 9, does nothing to instil confidence in the integrity of the institution. Instead, it has resulted in creating the impression that the FDA itself may have become part of the problem.

While shocking in its sheer brashness, the pattern of the FDA bowing to the interests of big business, to the detriment of public health is not new, and has already been played out over decades with many pharmaceutical drugs and with the history of allowing deliberately misleading listing of trans fat10 content on food labeling.

If the FDA is so inept (or worse) as to allow the entire country’s citizenry become a population of ‘lab rats’, then at the very least, THIS lab rat along with many others demand the right to have GMO labeling so that we can choose to be in the placebo group!

If Armageddon is defined as the place where the final battle will be fought between the forces of good and evil, then, on Tuesday, November 6th, 2012, California will become Prop37’s Armageddon. There is no middle ground here.

The viciousness with which the GMO proponent-side has been attacking highly-respected health-conscious professionals such as Dr. J. Mercola and others is a national disgrace11. Their reasoning for wanting to continue depriving the public of such knowledge is spurious and self –serving in the extreme12, 13, 14.

The FDA should never have allowed the matter to deteriorate to this level.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) calls for a moratorium on GM foods

The AAEM has called for a “moratorium on GM food, implementation of immediate long term independent safety testing, and labeling of GM foods, which is necessary for the health and safety of consumers”. 7

California: Vote YES on PROP 37

We all hope that Californians will vote “YES” for Proposition 37, for the good of California, and thus, for the good of the nation, because, If mandatory GMO-labeling occurs in California it will spread across the country.

What we must still do to protect food purity

Apart from whatever the outcome of Prop. 37, there is a significant movement already underway of real-food producers and consumers who specifically seek out non-GMO products that proudly post labels that state “NON-GMO” – as a badge of honour – on their packaging, so that informed shoppers can make their own healthy food choices, going forward 15, 16.

The more this movement is driven forward by consumer demand, the more people will be able to have control over what they wish to consume. The massive California Agra-Food industry could quickly find that further disrespect of consumer’ wishes would be economically crippling to their industry.

In the meantime, it is important that we all do our own advocacy and due diligence in boycotting known GMO products so that GMO producers will ultimately find it economically advantageous to switch back to the demanded marketing of real foods that are not owned, adulterated or tainted by GMO maleficium.